A Portrait of South Georgia: Abundance, Exploitation, Recovery - The New York Times

It is the cold waters that are rich with plant life, and the big mammals and birds that made the Southern Ocean - the waters around Antarctica - the richest hunting grounds for whalers.  The one port on South Georgia, the 1,367 square mile island nine hundred miles east of Cape Horn, is Grytviken.  It is most famous as the place from which Amundsen embarked for the South Pole, and  Ernest Shackleton in 1914  shoved off for two years stranded in the ice pack.  And to which he returned in the legendary 900 miles small boat journey from Elephant Island at the tip of the Antarctic peninsula.

My friend Richard Hudson stopped there aboard Issuma on his way to Capetown from the Antarctic.

There he met Sally Poncet who lives and studies on the island.

Richard tells me 

Sally Poncet.  I met her when I was in

Grytviken--she was counting wildlife.  I seem to recall her

half-jokingly telling me I had too much stuff (dinghy, liferaft,

spinnaker poles, fisherman sail) stored on deck.  As I think you know,

my boat (a Damien II), is a copy of the sailboat that she wintered in

Antarctica on, so she's definitely someone I'd listen to (though I still

have all that stuff stored on deck :)  

- GWC 

 A Portrait of South Georgia: Abundance, Exploitation, Recovery - The New York Times